The Watchtower’s Perspective Seeing Issues—In Terms Of Black & White

by The wanderer 46 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  The wanderer

  Dear ex-witless:
  
  We are agreed!
  
  It's a hard pill to swallow when you realize you were so wrong about something that you so strongly felt was right. Little Drummer Boy and I were also in for 14 years before we DA'd. See, now there are at least 2 things we have in common.
  
  Thank you for asking the questions
  that you did. One of the exceptional
  individuals on the board.
  
  Very respectfully,
  
  Richard
• 

  hillary_step

  Wanderer,

  Delusional? No.

  So glad that you are confident about this. Do you have a problem if I do not accept this?

  Many in my opinion naieve posters to this Board have tried offer advice to you, patiently, kindly, often giving you the benefit of the doubt, but with no success at all. I have always been honest and blunt with you, mainly because I got your number' from post one and think it unkind to pat you in the head and hide you under the stairs.

  I think you get the idea, that is, that many feel you have gone about unleashing your inner demons in a not very constructive way. I am also quite as convinced that you have no intention of listening to anybodies advice as you feel yourself above any advice that any person but a diety could offer. The classic signs of a schizophrenic who has shirked his medication.

  I think that you are unwell and quite disturbed, and subsequently this is my last post to you as anything more would be tedious repetition. I will just sincerely, and once again, encourage you see someone professionally who might be able to help you.

  No person here can.

  Best regards - HS
• 

  The wanderer

  Hill:
  
  Your entitled to your opinion.
  
  Richard
• 

  lost_light06

  I honestly don't understand what the problem with the wanderers posts are. I find them interesting and the format is just that, format.... it's different but not wrong. I understand him "testing his thoughts" on others. He's bouncing ideas of other posters here. We all do that every day. Whether we ask our significant other what they think of going to the coast for a weekend or if they like sushi, or we ask a friend if they like our new girl/boy friend. We're all bouncing ideas, beliefs, thoughts off other people. Is it wrong to do this in an online forum? We all want to be reassured that what we think isn't so completely off the mark that it's offensive or wrong to the majority of society. We all want to be "normal" in some degree. Honestly and sincerely if you don't like the way he formats his posts or that he uses this forum to test his inner thoughts........ the don't read or respond to them. It's really that simple. More pointedly, Get off his back!
• 

  The wanderer

  "He's bouncing ideas of other posters here."
  
  BINGO!
  
  Finally, someone understands!
  
  Thank you,
  
  Respectfully,
  
  The Wanderer
• 

  The wanderer

  Dear lostlight06:
  
  It amazes me how if I question, think or rethink
  about something that may not "fit the bill"
  according to someone's idea I become "delusional."
  
  You have to be kidding me?
  
  If I did not question I would still be a department
  store mannequin for the Watchtower Society (Duh).
  
  Respectfully,
  
  The Wanderer
• 

  journey-on

  I honestly don't understand what the problem with the wanderers posts are. I find them interesting and the format is just that, format

  I've been wanting to say this, too, but I kept thinking maybe there's something I'm not seeing that the rest of them are. When I saw your post, I decided, well, maybe I'm not the only one that thinks this. Thank you for saying it. Now I don't feel so different!

  I can name several posters that have their own format style and nobody says anything. Format just adds another creative touch to the words. What the h#*& is wrong with that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all I'm seeing is a man's own particular style and personality showing through. His topics are valid, too.
• 

  betterdaze

  ***College teaches critical thinking, in other words seeing issues from different perspectives.***
  
  I disagree with that definition. "Seeing issues from different perspectives" simply shows an attempt at open-mindedness. I tend more to agree with the explanation here:
  
  http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/definingCT.shtml
  
  Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
  
  
  As far as the Watchtower goes, I also disagree that they employ "black-and-white" thinking. It's classic NARCISSISTIC thinking.
  
  Rutherford, like Hitler, was a rabid narcissist. Their successes relied on constant propaganda, worship of government leadership, a New World Order where only the *speshul ones* deserved to live. Both engage/d their followers in a war, hate/d the *non-speshul* ones, promised wonderful living conditions in a Golden Age where every need would be met to overflowing, plenty of good work to do. Both were impressive orators and could really stir up a crowd of sheeple. No doubt there's a thread on JWD listing all the parallels between these two egomaniacs.
  
  Richard, two of the sources you provide are direct translations of Nazi "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength through Joy) propaganda, editorializing the grand successes of the government programs. Is it any wonder they it read like a blueprint for Brooklyn Bethel?
  
  Did you realize that what you were using as "proof" of Hitler's "good points" came from his very own marketing department? His own paid lackies? That's considering the Nazi perspective, no problem there, but shows no critical thinking, IMHO.
  
  This is one of the key differences in the appeal of the WT cult to those who entered as adults, as opposed to those of us who were trapped in as children. We were just as much victims of our parents' own narcissistic tendencies as were the Watchtower's.
  
  Anyway, the following article is a bit long but I think it describes both Hitler's and the Watchtower's narcissistic thinking rather well.
  
  ~Sue
• 

  betterdaze

  http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/npd/96437/1
  
  Narcissistic Leaders
  
  © Sam Vaknin
  
  Dec 1, 2002
  
  The narcissistic leader is the culmination and reification of his period, culture, and civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic societies.
  
  The malignant narcissist invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and this is further exacerbated by the trappings of power. The narcissist's grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are supported by real life authority and the narcissist's predilection to surround himself with obsequious sycophants.
  
  The narcissist's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution". The narcissistic leader fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
  
  The narcissistic leader is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, the narcissistic leader became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman". But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
  
  In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to as "nature" is not natural at all.
  
  The narcissistic leader invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
  
  In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment. Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
  
  Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon a narcissistic (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader. Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenceless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure.
  
  Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy. This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls. The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely-held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
• 

  jaguarbass

  Question: Do you view issues in black and white? If not how do you measure an issue?
  
  Respectfully,

  The Wanderer

  I'm 55 years old, I dont have any issues, consequently my blood pressure is 120 over 70.